Blogs & Ecology

happy meat via Green as a Thistle

The Guardian's Ethical Living columnist Lucy Siegle writes:

Ecotarianism has a winningly common-sense approach. The concept is simple: eat the foods with the lowest environmental burden, those with the lowest global-warming potential (GWP) and the least chance of messing up the planet via their acidification and pollution potential.

Food security is a concept that works on micro and macro levels. But, it's something that individuals don't often think about until they are confronted with a situation where they don't have access to adequate food and become food insecure. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture has produced a short animation that does a great job of explaining how individual actions can affect global food security. While the stats are specific to Japan, the concepts are universal.

Watch it, after the jump. ...

photo thefuturistics @ flickr.

Recently I declared I'd never buy a $40 Kids Konserve lunchbox for a kid no matter how many sustainable bells and whistles it had. The price seemed unsustainable.

Jenn Pentland

:: Foodies, rejoice! Get inspired to host a local, organic Thanksgiving feast with the help of Alice Waters, Dan Barber and Mario Batali.

:: Save money--and waste--by making homemade dog toys for Fido this holiday season.

Photo via ecosalon

A roach coach never sounds so good as during a 2 AM walk home from a bar. But most of the time, we're looking for something healthier and more substantial. In fact, wouldn't it be nice if we could find an organic meal truck?

Turns out, the Los Angeles area already has one. The Green Truck is a Culver City-based meal truck that offers an amazing menu and a green way to get a quick meal. ...

I have been convinced of the environmental benefits of bag-in-box wines, as they carry more wine in less packaging than any other form. (glass is heavy and is usually down-cycled, tetra-paks are light but not very green). Unfortunately, the selection is limited, the packaging is cheezy and the contents are a blend of who knows what. One Australian reader says they are known locally as "goon bags. You can get 4L of truly awful wine for about eight bucks thanks to these things."

Year after year of the same turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce can be tiresome. This Thanksgiving why not try out something new using only local ingredients found within a 100-mile radius of your home. Bahar Zakar, winner of the 2006 100-Mile Challenge created this stunning three-courser:...

"Frugal is the New Black" say the trendsetters. This isn't news to TreeHugger readers, nor is it particularly original; during the World Wars, that is how one lived. Sometimes people needed a little encouragement, so the the creatives got to work designing posters, telling people to save instead of spend, fix instead of buy new, grow instead of shop at the grocery, all messages that resonate today.

Have a look at a few of them in our inaugural slideshow of Frugal Green Living: Posters for the Movement

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Image: Getty Images/Pamela Moore

With all the planning, cooking, and cleaning, the last thing you want to think about is greening your Thanksgiving, right? But this is the perfect time to reflect and reassess your holiday preparations with a nod to sustainability.

Similar to our Green City Guides, the Healthy Voyager is an online video blog of healthy places to eat in different cities around the US. San Diego, Denver, and Big Bear are just a few of the featured locales. ...

Farmer Roy Lawrence and CSA members - Matt Lowe

Local eating advocates often cite reduced shipping emissions as a good reason to source food from as close to home as possible. The concept of reduced food miles equaling reduced carbon output quickly becomes clouded when economies of scale, production methods, and efficiency of shipping methods is taken into account. A group of farmers, activists and citizens in British Columbia have removed any hint of uncertainty by creating a local low carbon grain chain.

Keep reading to see how they did it. ...

Image source: Capital Growth

Monday we reported on a project in San Francisco to increase backyard gardens and locally produced food. Today we have yet another local gardening project to report on, as reported in The Guardian, this time in London. The Capital Growth project encourages area residents to plant gardens on their empty, flat roofs, well and frankly just about any available space in London, to increase the amount of locally grown food. ...